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| Wait for the tiny Clethra flowers to exhale their cloud of cinnamon and sugar. They do this as a surprise, after most of the garden's flowers have faded - and even the weeds look weary. |
If only I could gather and tame the patient, hard-working creatures of the garden. But I have! Anytime an individual or business uttered the word "pollinator," I bought some. Why stop at big, bombastic roses? The best pollinators have tiny buds and minuscule flowers - all the better to make bees, butterflies, and hummingbirds hover like cheerleaders around a star quarterback.
Attempts to grow fragrant mint turn into swaths of tiny flowers perfect for tiny insects and birds. A few Joe Pye Weed starters turn into a zone of musk and vanilla, with enormous flowers created by hundreds of compound flowers. That is my absolute last reference to Joe Pye...for today.
The efficacy of God's Word is the divine power experienced in the Creation garden. Every scent has a purpose, and the purpose will always have an effect.
I teach a random group of students about the Old Testament. We do not know each other, except through online learning sessions. We often have in common the same Scripture passages, their favorites and mine. They are drawn to those passages because the Holy Spirit has the power to teach through reading, remembering, and hearing.
Atheist students - I have had a few - will fight and debate about the clear Word of God. That is another effect of the Scriptures, which we find in synod presidents, district presidents, circuit toadies, and seminary professors. Fighting against the Word of God hardens them and blinds them against the clear Message. God's true meaning offends them and stirs up hatred.
KJV 3:16 For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.
17 For God sent not his Son into the world to condemn the world; but that the world through him might be saved.
18 He that believeth on him is not condemned: but he that believeth not is condemned already, because he hath not believed in the name of the only begotten Son of God.
John 3:16-18 is a perfect example of the efficacy of God's Word. Once treated as the perfect summary of the entire Bible, the passage is ignored or twisted into Universalism, Walter's Calvinism, or ELCA's latest distortion.
